¹ In the words of Braudel, Fernand, Civilization and Capitalism, Vol. 2: The Wheels of Commerce (New York, 1979), p. 515, “The new state … was borne along on the economic upsurge which favored its growth”.Google Scholar Similarly, Friedman, David, “A Theory of the Size and Shape of Nations”, Journal of Political Economy, 85 (02 1977), p. 61, argues that feudalism's rise and fall was the result of an exogenous rise and fall in trade flows.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² According to Bean, Richard, “War and the Birth of the Nation State,” this Journal, 33 (03 1973), p. 208, “the revival of professional infantry as an important military force strengthened the centralized state relative to the decentralized state and strengthened the monarch relative to his feudal barons. The sudden maturation in 1450 A.D. of the cannon, after a long infancy, as the destroyer of castles made a further and larger change in the art of war in favor of the centralized state”. William H. McNeill's explanation of the case of France is similar: “The Kingdom of France emerged on the map of Europe between 1450 and 1478, centralized as never before and capable of maintaining a standing professional army of about 25,000 men” (The Pursuit of Power [Chicago, 1982] p. 83). The French kings' success was due in part to heavy artillery pieces that brought down “previously formidable defenses … in a matter of hours.”Google Scholar

³ The large artillery pieces mentioned in a 1442 document by Jean Bureau, Charles VII's artillery captain, are all of the traditional wrought-iron type. See Contamine, Philippe, Guerre, état et société à la fin du moyen âge. Etude sur les armées des rois de France, 1337–1494 (Paris, 1972), p. 666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ North, Douglass C., Structure and Change in Economic History (New York, 1981), p. 66.Google Scholar

⁵ Theory of Location (first published as Die räumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft, 1940; English translation, New Haven, 1954). The title of the original German edition, The Spatial Order of the Economy, perhaps gives a better idea of Lösch's intentions than does the English.Google Scholar

⁶ This problem of spatial allocation of public goods has been considered previously by Walter Christaller, Central Places in Southern Germany (first published as Die zentralen Orte in Süddeurschland, 1933; trans. by C. W. Baskin, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966). For a recent application,Google Scholar see Kooij, Pim, “Peripheral Cities and their Regions in the Dutch Urban System until 1900,” this Journal, 48 (06 1988), pp. 357–71. However, Christaller's approach does not treat the fiscal implications of public-service provision explicitly.Google Scholar

⁷ The concept of the ruler as a revenue-maximizing predator has been proposed and applied to other historical periods by Levi, Margaret, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley, 1988).Google Scholar

⁸ For an analysis of the effects of geography on the structure of medieval states, see Fox, Edward Whiting, History in Geographical Perspective: The Other France (New York, 1971).Google Scholar

⁹ See fn. 2.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Bean, The Nation State, p. 217,Google Scholar and North, Douglass C. and Thomas, Robert Paul, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge, 1973), p. 122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Those familiar with the Lösch model will note that we have multiplied his individual demand function by population density to obtain the demand-density schedule, D(c).Google Scholar

¹² The more the marketing area is reduced, the more the point S. at which the demand curve starts to bend inward, moves up. In equilibrium, this point will lie at a distance of d_o below the point R at which the demand curve intersects the price axis. A possible competitor from outside the marketing area would be unable to recoup his transport costs if he tried to capture this part of the original producer's market.Google Scholar

¹³ For a discussion of the properties of these demand curves, see Batten, David F., “Technical Progress and the Implicit Dynamics of Löschian Spatial Analysis,” in Funck, R. H. and Kuklinski, A., eds., Space-Structure-Economy (Karlsruhe, 1986), p. 181.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See, for example, Parts III and V of Cornes, Richard and Sandler, Todd, The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods and Club Goods (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Capozza, D. T., and Van Order, R., “A Generalized Model of Spatial Compertition”, American Economic Review, 68 (12 1978), pp. 896–908.Google ScholarGreenhut, Melvin L., Norman, George, and Hung, Chao-Shun, The Economics of Imperfect Competition: A Spatial Approach (Cambridge, 1987), p. 20, define this condition as Hotelling-Smithies competition.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The ability to destroy one's competition has implications for another pricing policy not discussed in the text, namely, price discrimination, whereby the entrepreneur charges higher prices to those near the center of its marketing area and lower prices to those on the periphery. In the case of private goods the equilibrium total quantity sold by each firm and its marketing area will be smaller than under uniform mill or delivered pricing, because of the interaction among spatial competitors (Greenhut, Norman, and Hung, Economics of Imperfect Competition, pp. 166–68). In the public-good case, however, the result will be a larger territory controlled, since competitors can be prevented by force from offering lower “prices” to residents in border regions.Google Scholar

¹⁷ It should be noted that Lösch also considered technological change. An increase in production scale economies will cause the average-cost curve, AC in Figure 1b, to shift downward. Provided that the density curve in Figure Ia is “not very convex,” Löschian competition, under which each producer acts as a monopolist, will lead to a new equilibrium with a smaller typical marketing area. Under alternative forms of competition, however, the market area increases, as it does in the bureaucratic model presented here. See Greenhut, et al., Imperfect Competition, p. 21.Google Scholar

¹⁸ In considering the relationship between trade and the state, one must distinguish two issues. First, when military technology changes, what is the relationship between the size of the state and the extent of trade? It is this question that we address, explaining why changes in trade and state size were positively correlated. A second question is for a given military technology, how do differences in the fiscal capacity of the state relate to its size? Along the trade routes of medieval Germany, where tax levels were constrained by the mobility of factors of production, political units were necessarily small. In France, where immobile agricultural land could be taxed more heavily, political units could grow much larger. Thus trade and state size were negatively correlated.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The Nation State, pp. 205–9.Google Scholar

²⁰ War in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1984), p. 122.Google Scholar

²¹ Dupuy, R. Ernest and Dupuy, Trevor. The Encyclopedia of Military History from 2500 B.C. to the Present (2nd edn., New York, 1986), p. 335.Google Scholar

²² Favier, Jean, La guerre de cent ans (Paris, 1980), p. 566.Google Scholar

²³ The Nation State, p. 220.Google Scholar

²⁴ The Pursuit, p. 80.Google Scholar

²⁵ Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, p. 145.Google Scholar

²⁶ Gaussin, Pierre-Roger, Louis XI: Un roi entre deux mondes (Paris, 1976), p. 191.Google Scholar

²⁷ Daumas, Maurice, Histoire générale des techniques. Vol. 2: Les premières étapes du machinisme (Paris, 1965), p. 92.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, p. 200. The wagon forts of John Ziska during the Hussite wars were perhaps an exception to this general rule. Bombards were placed between the wagons at a site that the enemy was expected to attack. See Dupuy and Dupuy, Encyclopedia of Military History, p. 404.Google Scholar

²⁹ Gaier, Claude, L'indusrrie et le commerce des armes dans les anciennes principautés belges du XIIIène à la fin du XVème siècle (Paris, 1973), p. 189.Google Scholar

³⁰ Daumas, Histoire générate, p. 56.Google Scholar

³¹ H. Dubled, “L'artillerie royale française à l'époque de Charles VII et au début du régime de Louis XI (1437–1469): Bureau, Les Frères,” Sciences et techniques de l'armement, 50 (4^e fasc. 1976), p. 579.Google Scholar

³² Gaier, L'industrie et le commerce des armes, p. 96, fn. 110.Google Scholar

³³ Partington, J. R., A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder (Cambridge, 1960), p. 117.Google Scholar

³⁴ Contamine, Guerre, état, et société, p. 238.Google Scholar

³⁵ Dubled, “L'artillerie royale française,” p. 579.Google Scholar

³⁶ The Nation State, p. 207.Google Scholar

³⁷ Wolfe, Martin, The Fiscal System of Renaissance France (New Haven, 1972), p. 20.Google Scholar

³⁸ Contamine, Guerre, état et sociéré, p. 263.Google Scholar

³⁹ Wolfe, The Fiscal System, pp. 34–35.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Favier, La guerre, p. 554.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Wolfe, The Fiscal System, p. 25.Google Scholar

⁴² See, for example, North and Thomas, The Rise of the Western World, p. 122, and Bean, The Nation State, p. 217.Google Scholar

⁴³ Contamine, Guerre, état et société, p. 268.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Favier, La guerre, p. 566.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, p. 266.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Contamine, Guerre, état et société, p. 278.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 282.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 291.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 304.

⁵⁰ Wolfe, The Fiscal System, p. 309.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Dubois, Henri, “Le commerce de la France au temps de Louis XI: expansion ou défensive?” in Chevalier, B. and Contamine, P., eds., La France à la fin XVe siècle (Paris, 1985), p. 21.Google Scholar

⁵² Favier, La guerre, p. 583.Google Scholar

⁵³ Contamine, Philippe, “La France à la fin du XVe siècle: Pour un état des questions,” in Chevalier, B. and Contamine, P., eds., La France à la fin du XVe siècle (Paris, 1985), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ For a review of the evidence concerning this period as an apogee of the French economy, see ibid.